Course fees, asylum seekers, and the disabled on benefits
I was astonished this week when I discovered that, as a disabled person not in receipt of Disability Living Allowance—I’m still in the process of appealing the decision not to award that to me—I am not entitled to any discount on evening and weekend part-time course fees at my local college. But imagine my surprise to discover that if I were an asylum seeker—note, not a person who has successfully won the right to stay here, but someone who is waiting to find out—I could do the courses for free. How is that fair? But take note: this is not a blog entry attacking asylum seekers. No way. Read on…
tags: asylum seekers, bigotry, course fees, education, gay, incapacity benefit, inequality, lesbian, parapsychology, prejudice, unemployment benefitThe Home Office must stop deporting Iranian gays and lesbians
The Home Office claims a gay person can return to Iran and avoid persecution by being ‘discreet’. Old queens in positions of power within the civil service are obviously harking back to the good old pre-1967 days here in the UK, when the only chance of getting a gay date was via a public toilet pick-up. With the exception of Quentin Crisp and Joe Orton, homosexuals were, for the most part, very discreet in those times. They lived secret lives, looking for love under cover of darkness, often suffering from depression, self-hate and other nasties as a consequence of our then-society’s persecution and stereotyping of same-sex relationships and behaviours.
tags: asylum seekers, bisexuals, death, freedom, gays, Home Office, human rights, immigration, Labour, lesbians, persecution, torture
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